The Authority File

In the second episode of this four-part series, our guests discuss aligning the library’s mission with the university. First, Hilary Craiglow, Library Consulting Practice Lead at Attain Partners, and Emily McElroy, Vice President of Academic Relations at Taylor & Francis, emphasize the importance of strong partnerships between the library and other departments on campus. By building shared metrics and communicating each other’s needs, these collaborations showcase the library as a key player in university life and contribute to creating a community of support. Next, Jeffrey Gold, President of the University of Nebraska System, explains the quantifiable metrics he looks for from the system’s libraries and how they connect to the University’s foundational pillars and strategic plan. Last, Emily and Hilary underscore that the relationship between academic libraries and university leadership varies widely from institution to institution—though a close partnership tends to work in the library’s favor.

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Librarians know the library plays an essential role on campus. Intersecting with research, technology, student success, and more, the library bolsters key areas of student and faculty life—but is the library as adept at explaining its services as it is at providing them?

In this four-part series, we dig into why libraries must demonstrate their value to university administrators to secure funding needs and establish their place as an instrumental sector of campus life and university success. We’ll investigate how the library can align its mission with the university’s, why libraries need to “lift the curtain” on the behind-the-scenes work they do to provide resources, and the importance of adding context to library metrics to better tell your library’s story. Discussion also includes connecting to library donors and the challenges of demonstrating value in today’s political environment.

In this first episode, we meet our guests: Jeffrey Gold, President of the University of Nebraska System, Hilary Craiglow, Library Consulting Practice Lead at Attain Partners, and Emily McElroy, Vice President of Academic Relations at Taylor & Francis. First, they jump into the urgency of this work, highlighting the importance of libraries connecting their own metrics to the university’s data-driven decision-making. In addition, Jeff, Hilary, and Emily elucidate why libraries may struggle to illustrate their fundamental services, underlining issues like campus culture and a lack of training in strategic planning. Further, our guests share how communication tactics between the library and campus leadership have shifted—while libraries need a seat at the table with leadership, they also need to be able to communicate within the terms of a business model and justifying sustainable investments.

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In the final episode of this four-part series, Candida Rifkind and Dominic Davies, authors of Graphic Refuge, look at current and future trends of refugee comics. First, our guests underscore the interdisciplinary nature of refugee comics by highlighting both humanities and social sciences subjects they applied when writing the title, in addition to their aim to move away from a focus on trauma studies. Next, Candida and Dom chat about Wilfrid Laurier University Press’s On Comics and Grief by Dale Jacobs, and how Dale’s intention to foster a more fluid comics studies discipline aligns with the goals of their book.

Last, Candida and Dom discuss the ongoing genocide in Gaza in relation to Joe Sacco’s Palestine, published more than 20 years ago. Spotlighting several artists documenting Palestinian life and the aftermath of Israeli bombings, they reflect on the influx of comics published on social media platforms since 2023 and their role in raising political consciousness and action around the world. Further, they explore refugee comics’ ability to build solidarity and the need to apply a critical eye to comics that perpetuate tropes of suffering and ignore holistic refugee experiences.

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In the third episode of this four-part series with Candida Rifkind and Dominic Davies, authors of Graphic Refuge: Visuality and Mobility in Refugee Comics, we discuss refugee comics as political tools. First, our guests outline the characteristics of comics journalism, highlighting its conventions, convergence with new journalism, and influential authors like Joe Sacco. Next, Candida and Dom examine how refugee comics can effect political change. Though it may be difficult to draw direct lines from comics to legislation, they share how refugee comics have been used by lawmakers and have raised awareness of refugee issues and experiences. Reflecting on the importance of critical refugee studies when writing their book, Candida and Dom define the term “refugeeness” and explain the limitations of refugee as a label. Finally, Candida provides several examples of comics’ ability to visualize the spatial characteristics of refugee camps and how they “show us that the line between refugee camps and the rest of the world is really porous.”

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In the second episode of this four-part series, Candida Rifkind and Dominic Davies dive into their writing process and the ethics of artist-refugee relationships examined in their coauthored book, Graphic Refuge: Visuality and Mobility in Refugee Comics. Rather than collaborating throughout, Candida and Dom chose to write individual chapters and coauthor the introduction and epilogue. As they explain, this technique led to a natural dialogue between their sections in the book and a productive partnership amidst Covid lockdowns and life events.

Next, our guests summarize the artists featured in the title, which includes those with lived experiences as refugees, second generation refugees, and artists/writers commissioned by humanitarian organizations to communicate refugees’ stories. Candida and Dom then expand on the ethics between the artist and the refugee, exploring the empowerment of “refugee refusal” and spotlighting several examples of these ethical dynamics at play in Sarah Glidden’s Rolling Blackouts and Olivier Kugler’s Escaping Wars and Waves.

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This month’s series welcomes the authors of Graphic Refuge: Visuality and Mobility in Refugee Comics, Candida Rifkind, Professor of English at the University of Winnipeg, and Dominic Davies, Reader in English at City St George’s, University of London. In the next four episodes, we chat with Candida and Dom about the origins and unique writing process of their book, refugee comics within the comics studies discipline, and how the genre can function as a tool for political change. Further, we dig into the rise of comics journalism and the ethical relationship between a refugee and the artist depicting their experiences.

In the first episode of this series, Candida and Dom introduce us to refugee comics, defining the genre, its history, and readership. As our guests explain, comics have long chronicled the stories of outsiders—Superman as a refugee from Krypton, for example—and depicting or drawing the experiences of displacement has existed as long as displacement itself. Next, Candida and Dom contemplate the nebulous term “refugee” and how they interpreted it for their book, in addition to the importance of the reader to refugee comics’ tone and impact. As our guests point out, the main audience of refugee comics are those who have citizenship, thereby revealing a complex relationship between reader and author; as Candida underscores, “the very idea of a refugee can only exist if there is an idea of a citizen, and vice versa.”

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In the final episode of our four-part series with Springer Nature’s VP of Humanities, Social Sciences Books & Focus Projects Anil Chandy, we zoom out for a big-picture look at the intersection of Humanities and Social Sciences (HSS), libraries, and AI. First, Anil shares how AI tools have created opportunities to “stress test” the scholarly communication lifecycle, revealing pain points and opportunities for transformation. Next, Anil connects ethical AI use with academic libraries’ mission of equitable information access. As libraries themselves begin to incorporate AI tools into collection development strategies and information services, they can lead universities in responsible AI academic practices. Finally, Anil reflects on how HSS disciplines like political science, international relations, and law can interweave and forecast long-term AI regulation policies and solutions.

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In the third episode of this four-part series, Anil Chandy, VP of Humanities, Social Sciences Books & Focus Projects at Springer Nature, shares the advantages of implementing AI into publishing processes. Highlighting opportunities like language translation and plain language summaries, he outlines Springer Nature’s three models of AI use—text generation, text conversion, and text interrogation—and the human oversight required to ensure they meet publication standards. Next, Anil walks through Springer Nature’s first machine-generated title published in 2019. Developed to experiment with the available AI technology, the book underscored the limitations of AI content generation and signaled the publisher’s shift to “human-in-the-loop” solutions for generative AI. Last, our guest digs into the potential of AI translated texts and the applications of AI in peer review.

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In the second episode of this four-part series, we look at regulation strategies for AI technology with our guest Anil Chandy, VP of Humanities, Social Sciences Books & Focus Projects at Springer Nature. First, Anil provides an overview of how publishers are building AI guidelines and what nonprofit organizations or government agencies they’re looking to for guidance. As he points out, balancing directives from national leadership, local universities, and fellow publishers requires connecting with multiple stakeholders and staying abreast of recent developments from organizations like STM and COPE. Next, Anil underscores the need for those creating regulation to listen to all sectors of the scholarly communication lifecycle. Looking particularly at the vantage point of librarians, Anil highlights their unique outlook on user behavior, student privacy, and AI literacy. To close, Anil reflects on how HSS disciplines offer valuable perspectives on the societal implications of AI, including on bias and ethical use.

Access the episode transcript.

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This month, Anil Chandy, VP of Humanities, Social Sciences Books & Focus Projects at Springer Nature, joins The Authority File to apply a Humanities and Social Sciences (HSS) lens to artificial intelligence. Sharing his publisher perspective, Anil reflects on how HSS disciplines regarded AI before and after the launch of ChatGPT in late 2022. Further, he chats about current AI guidelines produced by publishers and how they’re influenced by initiatives put forth by governing bodies or technological organizations. Highlighting both areas for concern and the potential benefits of AI in the publishing lifecycle, Anil underscores the need for HSS approaches to this technology—both in studying the creative uses of large language models and scrutinizing its ethical and social implications.

In the first episode of this four-part series, Anil explains how his role at Springer Nature intersects with AI technology and provides a broad overview of HSS coverage of AI. In addition, he charts HSS discussions of AI pre- and post the launch of large language models for public use as theoretical ideas steadily became a reality. Finally, Anil explores the tension between supporting the democratization of knowledge—a key tenet of HSS studies—and ensuring copyright protections from AI scraping.

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